The Chains Are Coming Loose: Xbox One Cloud Save System

Prior to the Xbox One’s release, there was a lot of discussion about Microsoft’s policies related to the game console including the used game market, privacy issues and the pervasiveness of Kinect. One feature that was mentioned briefly was the cloud save system – a system designed by Microsoft to ensure your save files are tied to your gamertag wherever you go. It promised the ability to go to a friend’s house and pick up where you left off from your last play through. This past weekend, for many including myself, the flaws of this design have become more apparent

After the thanksgiving break filled with family festivities, I was ready to dive back into my Battlefield 4 campaign and find out the conclusion of Tombstone Squad’s mission. Instead, everytime I loaded the game, I was kicked back to the dashboard and the game had quit (i.e. not functioning in standby). By the 5th or 6th try, I chose campaign and was met with the select difficulty screen signifying the funeral of my save file. Other users on both the Xbox and Battlelog forums have mentioned similar issues including those who have started the campaign multiple times only to have it deleted after a few days. This issue is not only reserved to Battlefield 4 either, it has been seen with Ryse, Dead Rising 3 and Need For Speed. It is not clear at this time if this is a game issue that needs patching or a deep flaw with the console but it has gotten me concerned for the future. As the interface is currently, you cannot go into the harddrive or cloud storage to ascertain what is occupying that space, let alone how much space you have left. I fear for the future, when I am playing significantly longer single player campaigns and I am at the mercy of a perfectly functioning cloud save system to continue playing. If there is an outage or some issue Microsoft has to fix, would this mean that I wouldn’t be able to access my saves?

After much research, it seems that this was an issue that Microsoft was aware could be a possibility but is dependent on the developer (ExtremeTech). Larry Hryb (AKA Major Nelson) has posted in reddit in response to much of the feedback by stating “I had a meeting today about much of this and I can say that things will get better. I can’t offer a timeline of a list of what till be addressed first, but we are aware of the issue and things will get better.” We shall see in the near future if an update to the cloud save system and data storage management is part of their upcoming fix.